Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (45 page)

LOCATION SCOUTING, CASTING, STUNT
coordination, wardrobe, even what the family in the story were eating for dinner, were all run past me for my input and approval. I learned so much by Marty’s side during this incredible experience. When it came time to cast the role of the father, Marty asked me whom I envisioned.

Now,
Animal House
was always a Snider family favorite. My four younger brothers and I loved nothing more than quoting lines from the film to each other. If we could incorporate the dialogue into daily conversation, even better. That’s exactly what I did at the end of “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” While riffing on the repeat choruses at the end of the song, I spontaneously broke into Doug Neidermeyer’s “ROTC rap” from
Animal House
:

You’re all worthless and weak!

Now drop and give me twenty!

Everyone thought it was hysterical, so we kept it in the final mix. At that time I had no idea that I would have some future affiliation with the man who made those lines famous.

Neidermeyer is one of my favorite characters in
Animal House
. Though the father, son, and entire family portrayed in the “We’re Not Gonna Take It” video are supposed to represent
my
family, I told Marty that someone like the guy who played Neidermeyer would be perfect to capture the screaming tyrant my dad could be.

Marty looked at me, confused. “Someone
like
Mark Metcalf [the actor’s name]? Why don’t we get him? What’s he doing, working on a cure for cancer?”

Oddly, while in my world Mark Metcalf was a “superstar,” in reality he had all but retired from acting and gone into producing. A few quick calls were made, and for a thousand bucks and the price of a round-trip coach ticket from New York, we had
the actual
Douglas C. Neidermeyer in our video!

I remember the day Mark Metcalf was to arrive at LAX airport, and Marty was going to send a production assistant (the lowest position on a film set) to pick him up.

“Oh, hell no!”
I exclaimed. “I’m picking him up!”

Later that same afternoon, I was standing in the baggage-claim area of the airport looking for our video’s star when I heard from close behind me, in that Neidermeyer voice, “You lookin’ for me, mister?” (a classic line from
Animal House
). I spun around and there he was . . .
Neidermeyer!
I don’t think Mark could believe my genuine childlike glee at meeting him. The entire ride back to Marty’s I made Mark regale me with
Animal House
tales.

Mark Metcalf’s dialog for the video was worked up by Mark, Marty, and myself. My idea was, contrary to the
Animal House
movie, Douglas C. Neidermeyer had
survived
being shot by his own troops in Vietnam and was now the married father of six kids and none too happy about it. Metcalf’s improvisation was designed to incorporate things my dad had always said to me growing up (the most famous being, “What do you wanna do with your life?!”) while paraphrasing his character’s dialogue in the movie. I’ve always joked that the sole reason I came up with the idea for the video was to give my brothers and me some fresh
Animal House
–type dialogue to play with.

The video shoot itself was an amazing experience. Videos are like little movies (especially the way Marty Callner and Twisted Sister were doing them). For an outcast kid from Long Island to have his crazy ideas brought to life like that was almost overwhelming.

THE STAY HUNGRY LIVE
concert was an entirely different animal. Marty Callner specialized in filming concerts, having done some legendary specials for HBO in the late seventies and early eighties. The hugely successful Cher, Diana Ross, Pat Benatar, Fleetwood Mac, and other concert specials were all his.
¹
I just stepped back and let him do his thing.

Marty had a reputation to uphold and wanted to make a powerful statement to the rock-video world. His plan was to make Twisted
Sister even larger-than-life than we already were. To achieve this, everything was done on a grander scale. The stage Marty picked for the show was wider and deeper than most others, and our signature “pink, barbed-wire fences” were doubled in height and width to give the stage a massive look. To bring out the “bigness” of the whole event, Marty wanted to use a Louma crane. The Louma jib crane allows for simultaneous, sweeping lateral and vertical movement, with 360-degree rotation of the camera. It changed filmmaking, and the invention even received an Academy Award in 2005. Though they’re now a standard in the film industry, only two of these cranes existed at that time, and they were run by Jean-Marie Lava
lou
and Alain
Ma
sseron, the creators and namesakes. Hang the expense, Marty had to have one.

Filmed in San Bernardino, California, at the Orange Pavilion, the show sold out nearly instantaneously. The West Coast buzz on Twisted Sister was huge, and because the event was being filmed for a home video and to be broadcast on MTV, the fans would do just about anything to get tickets.

The night of the filming couldn’t have been more tense. Though it wasn’t going out live, we only had one shot at getting it right. Do or die. This was a huge opportunity for the band and we could not afford to blow it.

One major concern was the barricade the film crew had set up to keep the audience back from the stage and allow room for the film crew and Louma crane to move about. For one, it left a wide chasm between the band and the crowd, something that would definitely affect our connection with the fans. Second, it was freestanding, meaning nothing moored the barricade to the ground so it could resist any force from the crowd. It pretty much depended on the audience’s voluntarily not pressing up against it. What kind of useless, fucked-up barricade was that?!

The band and our crew tried to impress our concerns upon Marty and the production staff, but having never worked with a raucous, heavy-metal crowd before, they just didn’t understand the potential problem. We were pretty much told not to worry our pretty little heads about such things and focus on the show.
If they say so . . .

When the audience was let in, there was initially no problem, though I could see by the looks on the faces of the fans, on the video
monitors, even they were confused by how the barricade was supposed to work. A short time before the band was supposed to go on, the pressure of the packed house became too great, the barricade collapsed and thousands of fans surged forward. It was terrible!

Down the barricade went in splinters, with the fans spilling onto the broken shards, falling onto one another and into the camera crew and their expensive equipment. The entire filming plot was wiped out in a second, and injured fans were being carried out of the place by EMTs. The fire marshal arrived and was ready to shut down the event!

An announcement was made: “Dee Snider says the band isn’t coming out unless you all back up!”
Uh oh
. Joe Gerber saved the show by grabbing the mic and emceeing the near riot. He talked the packed house through a step-by-step backing up, so injured people could be helped and the film crew could regroup.

When it was finally time to start the show, another reality became painfully evident. While concerts are traditionally dark events, with the stage dramatically lit, they don’t provide enough light to “read” well on film. To accommodate the lighting needs of the camera, additional lights are added onstage, and the houselights are left on the audience. When you watch a filmed concert event, you don’t notice the extra light because the film “swallows” it up, making the final product look pretty normal. Unfortunately, having your dramatic lighting effects nullified by lights that stay on during the filming of your show screws up the band’s head, and nothing kills the crowd vibe like turning on the houselights.

On top of all this, the worst thing of all happened to me . . . I had a wardrobe malfunction.

This was the first time I was wearing my new stage outfit under “battle conditions.” Over the years, Suzette and I had pretty much locked in what worked and didn’t work for me onstage . . .
pretty much.
To keep my pants from pulling down in the back, Suzette had designed stylized suspenders that V-ed up from the front and back and went under my shoulder pads. Great idea . . . in theory. The first time I violently threw my body forward onstage that night, the stitching on the back of the suspender gave out and it tore free. Not only did I have a dangling suspender like a vestigial tail, but my
pants kept pulling down in the back every time I bent over . . . which was a lot.
Having the crack of your ass hanging out is not metal!

On top of my woes, the band was having all sorts of technical issues. Eddie had an equipment issue that made the opening solo on “The Price” sound as if he were playing a banjo!

Overall, it was a self-conscious performance for a self-conscious audience. To top it all off, when we finished the show, Marty said he needed us to go back onstage and redo the opening song and a couple of others. Talk about anticlimactic!

When the show was finally
over over
, the band went back to our dressing trailer and stood in stunned silence.
We blew it! We sucked!
It could not have been worse. Knowing that we have always been our toughest critic—which I believe is the reason we are so good live; we’re never satisfied—I told everyone not to say a word about how horrible we knew we were. Maybe people didn’t think it was that bad.

Minutes later, the dressing-room door flew opened and in poured Marty Callner and his production staff.
They were blown away!
Everybody was blown away! Nobody noticed
any
of the issues we were having, and when the show was all edited and overdubbed (Eddie even got to fix his solo on “The Price”), it looked and sounded amazing.

Twisted Sister’s
Stay Hungry Live
was released on VHS tape and laser disc and aired about eighteen times that year on MTV. Audiences loved it! Unlike so many visually compelling bands before us (Alice Cooper, Kiss, etc.), Twisted Sister got to show our stuff on an international grand scale. Which was a blessing and a curse.

35

A
fter spending several beautiful spring weeks in Los Angeles producing and filming our video, the live concert special, and, before that, recording our new record, Twisted Sister boarded a plane and flew (and drove) to New Castle, Great Britain, to start the first leg of our
Stay Hungry
tour.

While it took several weeks for a new release to hook in (get into the stores and on the radio) in the United States, the United Kingdom was much more reactive. The metal press had a stronger connection with the fans, and the metalheads responded more readily to the latest news about their favorite bands. But they couldn’t respond to what they didn’t know about. . . .

When on May 27, 1984, Twisted Sister got off our tour bus (from Heathrow Airport) in Newcastle, England—nearly twenty-four hours later—the weather was the polar opposite of what we had left in LA. Where it was sunny and warm in Los Angeles, it was dreary and cold in the UK. We had a day off to readjust before our tour began, but the band and I were immediately depressed just being there. As I lay in my hotel room, recuperating from the jet lag, the phone rang and I heard the immediately recognizable voice of a person I had never met.